The Mystery of the Sea by Bram Stoker

The Mystery of the Sea Book Cover by Bram Stoker

The Mystery of the Sea

By

Bram Stoker

Bram Stoker Gælic verse To win the mystery o' the sea

[Gælic verse and English translation.]

“To win the mystery o’ the sea,
“An’ learn the secrets that there be,
“Gather in ane these weirds three:

“A gowden moon on a flowin’ tide;
“An’ Lammas floods for the spell to bide;
“An’ a gowden mon wi death for his bride.”

The Mystery of the Sea by Bram Stoker

The Mystery of the Sea Contents

The Mystery of the Sea Chapter I. Second Sight
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter II. Gormala
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter III. An Ancient Rune
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter IV. Lammas Floods
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter V. The Mystery of the Sea
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter VI. The Ministers of the Doom
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter VII. From Other Ages and the Ends of the Earth
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter VIII. A Run on the Beach
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter IX. Confidences and Secret Writing
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter X. A Clear Horizon
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter XI. In the Twilight
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter XII. The Cipher
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter XIII. A Ride through the Mountains
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter XIV. A Secret Shared
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter XV. A Peculiar Dinner Party
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter XVI. Revelations
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter XVII. Sam Adamss Task
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter XVIII. Fireworks and Joan of Arc
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter XIX. On Changing Ones Name
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter XX. Comradeship
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter XXI. The Old Far West and the New
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter XXII. Crom Castle
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter XXIII. Secret Service
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter XXIV. A Subtle Plan
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter XXV. Inductive Ratiocination
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter XXVI. A Whole Wedding Day
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter XXVII. Entrance to the Cavern
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter XXVIII. Voices in the Dark
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter XXIX. The Monument
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter XXX. The Secret Passage
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter XXXI. Marjorys Adventure
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter XXXII. The Lost Script
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter XXXIII. Don Bernardino
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter XXXIV. The Accolade
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter XXXV. The Popes Treasure
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter XXXVI. The Rising Tide
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter XXXVII. Round the Clock
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter XXXVIII. The Duty of a Wife
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter XXXIX. An Unexpected Visitor
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter XL. The Redemption of a Trust
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter XLI. Treasure Trove
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter XLII. A Struggle
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter XLIII. The Honour of a Spaniard
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter XLIV. The Voice in the Dust
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter XLV. Danger
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter XLVI. Ardiffery Manse
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter XLVII. The Dumb Can Speak
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter XLVIII. Dunbuy Haven
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter XLIX. Gormalas Last Help
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter L. The Eyes of the Dead
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter LI. In the Sea Fog
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter LII. The Skares
The Mystery of the Sea Chapter LIII. From the Deep
The Mystery of the Sea Appendix A
The Mystery of the Sea Appendix B
The Mystery of the Sea Appendix C
The Mystery of the Sea Appendix D
The Mystery of the Sea Appendix E

The Mystery of the Sea Cipher

The Mystery of the Sea

The Mystery of the Sea Vagabonds, Beggers Cipher

The Mystery of the Sea Chapter I. Second Sight

I had just arrived at Cruden Bay on my annual visit, and after a late breakfast was sitting on the low wall which was a continuation of the escarpment of the bridge over the Water of Cruden. Opposite to me, across the road and standing under the only little clump of trees in the place was a tall, gaunt old woman, who kept looking at me intently. As I sat, a little group, consisting of a man and two women, went by. I found my eyes follow them, for it seemed to me after they had passed me that the two women walked together and the man alone in front carrying on his shoulder a little black box—a coffin. I shuddered as I thought, but a moment later I saw all three abreast just as they had been. The old woman was now looking at me with eyes that blazed. She came across the road and said to me without preface:

“What saw ye then, that yer e’en looked so awed?” I did not like to tell her so I did not answer. Her great eyes were fixed keenly upon me, seeming to look me through and through. I felt that I grew quite red, whereupon she said, apparently to herself: “I thocht so! Even I did not see that which he saw.”

“How do you mean?” I queried. She answered ambiguously: “Wait! Ye shall perhaps know before this hour to-morrow!”

Her answer interested me and I tried to get her to say more; but she would not. She moved away with a grand stately movement that seemed to become her great gaunt form.

After dinner whilst I was sitting in front of the hotel, there was a great commotion in the village; much running to and fro of men and women with sad mien. On questioning them I found that a child had been drowned in the little harbour below. Just then a woman and a man, the same that had passed the bridge earlier in the day, ran by with wild looks. One of the bystanders looked after them pityingly as he said:

“Puir souls. It’s a sad home-comin’ for them the nicht.”

“Who are they?” I asked. The man took off his cap reverently as he answered:

“The father and mother of the child that was drowned!” As he spoke I looked round as though some one had called me.

There stood the gaunt woman with a look of triumph on her face.

*****

The curved shore of Cruden Bay, Aberdeenshire, is backed by a waste of sandhills in whose hollows seagrass and moss and wild violets, together with the pretty “grass of Parnassus” form a green carpet. The surface of the hills is held together by bent-grass and is eternally shifting as the wind takes the fine sand and drifts it to and fro. All behind is green, from the meadows that mark the southern edge of the bay to the swelling uplands that stretch away and away far in the distance, till the blue mist of the mountains at Braemar sets a kind of barrier. In the centre of the bay the highest point of the land that runs downward to the sea looks like a miniature hill known as the Hawklaw; from this point onward to the extreme south, the land runs high with a gentle trend downwards.

Cruden sands are wide and firm and the sea runs out a considerable distance. When there is a storm with the wind on shore the whole bay is a mass of leaping waves and broken water that threatens every instant to annihilate the stake-nets which stretch out here and there along the shore. More than a few vessels have been lost on these wide stretching sands, and it was perhaps the roaring of the shallow seas and the terror which they inspired which sent the crews to the spirit room and the bodies of those of them which came to shore later on, to the churchyard on the hill.

If Cruden Bay is to be taken figuratively as a mouth, with the sand hills for soft palate, and the green Hawklaw as the tongue, the rocks which work the extremities are its teeth. To the north the rocks of red granite rise jagged and broken. To the south, a mile and a half away as the crow flies, Nature seems to have manifested its wildest forces. It is here, where the little promontory called Whinnyfold juts out, that the two great geological features of the Aberdeen coast meet. The red sienite of the north joins the black gneiss of the south. That union must have been originally a wild one; there are evidences of an upheaval which must have shaken the earth to its centre. Here and there are great masses of either species of rock hurled upwards in every conceivable variety of form, sometimes fused or pressed together so that it is impossible to say exactly where gneiss ends or sienite begins; but broadly speaking here is an irregular line of separation. This line runs seawards to the east and its strength is shown in its outcrop. For half a mile or more the rocks rise through the sea singly or in broken masses ending in a dangerous cluster known as “The Skares” and which has had for centuries its full toll of wreck and disaster. Did the sea hold its dead where they fell, its floor around the Skares would be whitened with their bones, and new islands could build themselves with the piling wreckage. At times one may see here the ocean in her fiercest mood; for it is when the tempest drives from the south-east that the sea is fretted amongst the rugged rocks and sends its spume landwards. The rocks that at calmer times rise dark from the briny deep are lost to sight for moments in the grand onrush of the waves. The seagulls which usually whiten them, now flutter around screaming, and the sound of their shrieks comes in on the gale almost in a continuous note, for the single cries are merged in the multitudinous roar of sea and air.

The village, squatted beside the emboucher of the Water of Cruden at the northern side of the bay is simple enough; a few rows of fishermen’s cottages, two or three great red-tiled drying-sheds nestled in the sand-heap behind the fishers’ houses. For the rest of the place as it was when first I saw it, a little lookout beside a tall flagstaff on the northern cliff, a few scattered farms over the inland prospect, one little hotel down on the western bank of the Water of Cruden with a fringe of willows protecting its sunk garden which was always full of fruits and flowers.

From the most southern part of the beach of Cruden Bay to Whinnyfold village the distance is but a few hundred yards; first a steep pull up the face of the rock; and then an even way, beside part of which runs a tiny stream. To the left of this path, going towards Whinnyfold, the ground rises in a bold slope and then falls again all round, forming a sort of wide miniature hill of some eighteen or twenty acres. Of this the southern side is sheer, the black rock dipping into the waters of the little bay of Whinnyfold, in the centre of which is a picturesque island of rock shelving steeply from the water on the northern side, as is the tendency of all the gneiss and granite in this part. But to east and north there are irregular bays or openings, so that the furthest points of the promontory stretch out like fingers. At the tips of these are reefs of sunken rock falling down to deep water and whose existence can only be suspected in bad weather when the rush of the current beneath sends up swirling eddies or curling masses of foam. These little bays are mostly curved and are green where falling earth or drifting sand have hidden the outmost side of the rocks and given a foothold to the seagrass and clover. Here have been at some time or other great caves, now either fallen in or silted up with sand, or obliterated with the earth brought down in the rush of surface-water in times of long rain. In one of these bays, Broad Haven, facing right out to the Skares, stands an isolated pillar of rock called locally the “Puir mon” through whose base, time and weather have worn a hole through which one may walk dryshod.

Through the masses of rocks that run down to the sea from the sides and shores of all these bays are here and there natural channels with straight edges as though cut on purpose for the taking in of the cobbles belonging to the fisher folk of Whinnyfold.

When first I saw the place I fell in love with it. Had it been possible I should have spent my summer there, in a house of my own, but the want of any place in which to live forbade such an opportunity. So I stayed in the little hotel, the Kilmarnock Arms.

The next year I came again, and the next, and the next. And then I arranged to take a feu at Whinnyfold and to build a house overlooking the Skares for myself. The details of this kept me constantly going to Whinnyfold, and my house to be was always in my thoughts.

Hitherto my life had been an uneventful one. At school I was, though secretly ambitious, dull as to results. At College I was better off, for my big body and athletic powers gave me a certain position in which I had to overcome my natural shyness. When I was about eight and twenty I found myself nominally a barrister, with no knowledge whatever of the practice of law and but little less of the theory, and with a commission in the Devil’s Own—the irreverent name given to the Inns of Court Volunteers. I had few relatives, but a comfortable, though not great, fortune; and I had been round the world, dilettante fashion.

The Mystery of the Sea Chapter II. Gormala

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